Originally Posted by
obrentharris
Both UPS and FedEx will deny your claim unless the bike was "properly packed." Their interpretation of "properly packed" includes 3 inches of padding between the bike and the box.
I have seen more than one frame where the damage to the box indicates that those wooden or plastic spacers have indeed protected the frame from much worse damage. I have also seen some sadly crushed forks, rear triangles and dropouts when those spacers were not used. ...Yes, I've shipped and unpacked a large number of bikes and frames.
Brent
None of that makes sense to me.
For starters, every major manufacturer I know ships their bikes with less than 3" of padding surrounding the bike.
Second, as for the spacers, what difference does it make if the chainstays and seatstays are all scarred up, bent or cracked, but the dropouts have maintained their 130mm spacing?
Thirdly, take a carbon fork. Imagine there is a force strong enough to crush it. Now say there's a spacer holding the fork ends 100 mm apart. Think it's going to come out ok because it's got a plastic thing pressed into the fork ends? Once a force large enough to deform a frame or fork acts on the box and its contents, the product inside is ruined, and it's the shipper's responsibility if it was in transit.
Lastly, it takes half a minute of Googling to find many stories of people who had bikes damaged in shipping. They sought advice from the internet. Many warned them: buddy, you're screwed. But instead, FedEx, or whatever carrier, covered the insured amount. Here are two quick examples:
https://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/S...ved!_P4554989/
https://www.******.com/r/cycling/com...damage_claims/